Page 44

The barn breathes around us, low and damp and waiting. Chains hang from the rafters, old and rust-slick, swaying faintly as if they remember weight, as if they miss it. A butcher block squats against the far wall, scarred so deep the wood has gone black in places, the grain split and swollen like it tried to absorb what it’s seen and failed. Beneath it sits a bucket of melted ice, pink water barely moving, stained past the point of denial.

Somewhere in the dark, a radio crackles—no music, no voice, just static that pops and hisses in uneven bursts, never settling, like it’s stuck between stations and refuses to die. The static dips when Malek steps forward—then surges when he stops.

Then the sound answers.

Not a growl. Not a scream.

A breath—wet and ruined—dragged out of a throat that no longer remembers how lungs are supposed to work. It crawls out of the shadows and settles along my spine, intimate and heavy, like something practicing being alive.

My pulse stutters.

Behind the stall bars, a body jerks—not pacing, not stalking, but convulsing. Chains bite into wrists that are unmistakably human, skin raw and torn where it’s been fighting them. Its chest heaves in shallow, panicked pulls, ribs fluttering too fast beneath skin gone gray and waxy but not gone. Not yet.

Its eyes lift and lock onto mine.

Brown. Clear. Terrified.

Its mouth opens, and the sound that comes out almost isn’t a word.

“Help.”

It collapses halfway through, mangled by blood and spit, but I hear it anyway, sharp and clear as if it were spoken directly into my ear. My breath catches so hard it hurts.

Scarlett’s voice slips in without asking—soft, steady, the way it was the day Mrs. Cooper almost ate my face off.

“You keep looking for something left of them, Selah. A laugh. A memory. A piece you can save. But once they turn, there isn’t anything left of who they were. Not the part that loved you. Not the part that made them them.”

“No,” I whisper, already shaking my head. “Malek—this one isn’t⁠—”

“Finished turning.” His voice doesn’t change, and somehow that’s worse.

He presses the hatchet into my palm and forces my fingers closed around the handle. The wood is cold and slick, and my grip trembles even as it tightens.

“You learn that here.” The radio spits static between us. Malek doesn’t blink. “You kill what still looks human.”

My head keeps shaking even as my chest tightens. “They’re still in there.” My grip tightens around the hatchet. “Or he is. I don’t know. But he knows, Malek. He’s scared.”

The thing jerks harder, chains rattling, its eyes never leaving mine. Not hunting. Not searching. Recognizing. As its mouth works uselessly, breath collapsing into wet, choking sounds, Malek doesn’t move.

“That’s why,” he says.

The smell thickens as something sweet and rotten curls tighter around the iron tang, something fungal blooming underneath it all. The body spasms, breath hitching sharp and wrong, its jaw snapping once in a reflex that doesn’t belong to a choice. Teeth click too close together.

My grip tightens without permission, muscles locking as my body argues with my mind.

“This isn’t mercy,” my voice trembles despite my effort to steady it. “This is⁠—”

“Cruelty,” Malek finishes looking at the chains. “Yes.”

He steps back—not away, just far enough.

The radio spikes, static shrieking sharp as a needle driven too deep, and the thing screams then—really screams—and it’s worse than silence could ever be. Human pain stretches thin and tears as something else forces its way up underneath it, its spine arching hard as joints pop and breath collapses into something feral.

Something inside it shifts.

Malek’s voice cuts straight through the noise.

“Now.”